Monday, June 22, 2015

I just read Chris Fox's book 5,000 Words an Hour. And I loved it. Since I don't want to spoil it, I won't tell you everything the book said, but I'm going to share my sprint experiments. Mainly, because I'm skeptical. I'm pretty sure I can't write 5000 words an hour. A really good day for me is 6,000--and that will take me six hours, since I typically write about a 1000 words an hour. But Chris suggests starting off small--five minute sprints--slowly building up to 30 minutes--and tracking all of it. He insists that by tracking I'll see noticeable increases in speed. Hmm... not so sure. But I'm game to try, and I'm going to do that here.

He also suggested answering all of these questions before you start a scene/sprint: (I've modified these a tad to suit myself)
Main characters: Bree and Evie
Time: 8 p.m. December
Place: Uncle Mitch's lab
Crux: Accidentally let loose a lab animal
Goal: Get Uncle Mitch's How to Make Anyone Fall in Love With You experiment
Mood: Dark, tense

I also modified the sprint spreadsheet.

BOOK

SPRINT MINUTES

STARTING COUNT

ENDING

COUNT

DAILY COUNT

MONTHLY COUNT

DATE

Witch Winter

5

0

74

6/22

5

132

2664

6/22

5

84

6/23

5

160

2132

6/23

My goal is to begin Witch Winter, Witch Way's sequel, today and finish my first draft by August 15th. This week, in addition to my regular writing, I'll write for a five minute sprint each day (5 days a week), and bump it up in five minute increments each week until I reach 30 minutes. I already have two thirds of the book outlined.

I did the 5 minute sprint twice today. This morning I logged 74 words, which at first was pretty depressing. But after doing the math I realized how closely that met my typical 1000 words an hour output. I did it again this afternoon and wrote 132 words. I'm not sure why I was so much faster. It may have been because I realized how fast five minutes can fly. (Why does it seem like forever when I'm waiting for something?) Doing the math, if I wrote at that same pace for 60 minutes my output would be 1500+ versus my typical 1000. Hmm... and I've only done it twice so far.Here are the two sprints. (They're not very pretty. Writing fast does that.)
Morning:

The
creature stared at me with his unblinking yellow eyes, watching my every move,
as if he knew what I had in mind. I turned my back to him, grateful for the
bars that separated us.

I
stood in line, waiting to board the bus, my hands and feet cold, but my heart
warm. Mrs. Price’s compliments rang in my head, and despite the Connecticut
cold trying to slice through the layers of my sweater, jacket, mittens and
scarf, I felt warm and bubbly inside.

“Hey,
it’s Evie, right?”

I
turned to watch Meredith Olson swinging through the crowd, her long dark hair
bouncing around her shoulders. I only knew her by sight, as I was a lowly sophomore
and she was not only a senior, but also the editor in chief of the high school
newspaper. Or, in other words, the embodiment of everything I wanted to be.
Smart, popular, a person of influence…cause, yeah, being an editor of the
school newspaper carried a lot of clout.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

So, as most of you know, my book Witch Ways was picked up in the Kindle Scout Competition, which is exciting and wonderful. A couple of days ago, two developmental editors from Amazon contacted me with a few recommended changes. All were easy fixes, but when they first suggested them, I was, momentarily, stumped. Now that I've finished them, I love them, and think that each make the book stronger. But I thought I'd see what, if anything, others think. Because two of the changes occur toward the end of the book, I can't share those without major spoilage, but here's an excerpt from Chapter Three and its revision. The first is my original chapter.

Bree nodded. Standing, she threw one
leg over the sill.

From inside, I heard Bree fall. I ran to the window to watch her
flailing arms and hands searching for a hand-hold. Branches and twigs snapped
beneath her weight.

CHAPTER
THREE

“Bree! Are you okay?”

She gaped up at me, her mouth a perfect
O as she tumbled backward. She landed on the grass.

Josh and his friend, followed by the Henderson’s
three dogs, sprinted across the lawn.

“Gabby!Go get Mom!” Josh called to his little
sister over his shoulder right before he vaulted over the hedge separating our
yards. He landed with a one-footed thud.

Feeling a little like Rapunzel, I
leaned out my window. “Bree?”

She moaned without opening her eyes. With
her arms spread out wide, she lay flat on her back. If not for her left leg
sticking out at an odd angle, she looked like she could be taking a nap on the
lawn.

Her brother and Dylan stared at her as
if she was a strange fish washed up on shore. Josh looked up and frowned at me.
Dylan met my gaze with a smile.

“Hi,” he mouthed without noise.

I waved. Heat crawled up my neck, and I
hoped he couldn’t see my blush. We stared at each other until the back door
screen opened and shut with a bang.

“What happened here?” My dad strode onto the porch and
stopped when he saw the two boys and three mulling dogs surrounding a moaning
Bree.

Riddler, the German Shepherd mix, tried
to snuffle in Bree’s hair, but Josh pulled him away and held him by the collar.
Joker, the half-terrier with pieces and bits of lots of other breeds, poked Bree’s
hand with his snout. Without opening her eyes, she swatted at him. Gabby, her
baby sister, grabbed Joker and Penguin, an ancient black and white Boston
Terrier, and hauled them back a few feet.

A door slammed shut at the Hendersons’
house, and Bree’s mom, raced across the grass, barefoot. She stopped short of Bree,
worry and anger battling in her expression.

“For once, we agree on something,”Mrs. Henderson said as she squatted
down beside her. “We need to get you to the doctor.”

Bree rolled her head so she could see Dylan.
Batting her eyelashes, she looked at him through her tears. “Will you take me?”

“Don’t be silly!” Mrs. Henderson said,
placing her hands on her hips. “Josh, go and get the van. Then call your
father. Tell him to meet us at the emergency room. Again. Honestly, that place
needs to name a wing after our family.”

Josh shot his sister a pitying look
before he turned and jogged toward the barn where the Hendersons kept their
collection of motley cars. All three dogs followed, because, obviously, Josh
was the leader of the pack.

But Dylan stayed. He grinned up at me,
but his smile faltered when he met my dad’s glare.

Dad shot me a glance before returning
his attention to Bree.

“Want me to help you up?” Dylan asked.

“Yes, please,” Bree said through white
lips. She tried to smile at him, but it looked painful and off—lots of teeth,
but no happiness.

“Let’s wait for the van.” My dad
sounded growlier than any of the Henderson dogs. He focused on Dylan. “Who are
you? You weren’t in my daughter’s bedroom, too, were you?”

“Huh, no sir.” Dylan brushed off his
hand on his jeans before extending it. “Dylan Fox.” He nodded at the Henderson’s
house. “I was hanging out with Josh when we saw Bree fall.”

My dad grunted.

Mrs. Henderson knelt on the ground and
brushed the hair out of Bree’s face. “Sweetheart, you’re going to be okay.”

“Oz-z-z,” Bree moaned.

“I know, sweetie,” Mrs. Henderson said.

“She can’t be in the play!” Gabby squealed,
as the thought hit her. She rose to her toes and twirled. “I can be Dorothy!”

Mrs. Henderson silently shook her head.

“Whoever heard of an eight year old
Dorothy?” Bree said through gritted teeth.

Mrs. Henderson pulled opened the van’s
sliding door and moved aside so Dylan could load Bree into the back seat. He
fussed over her leg, propping it up beside her. Backing away, he shot me
another glance and his smile went from being pitying and kind, to something
else, something warm, smooth and promising.

Mrs. Henderson climbed in the passenger
seat and rolled down the window. “Gabby, you’re responsible for getting dinner on the table,”
she said. “Meredith will be home from swim at five. Lincoln isn’t done with
soccer until 5:30. The twins are at piano until almost six—Mrs. Rochester will
drop them off. I don’t know where the boys are. I’m sure they’ll show up when
they get hungry. You can cook a couple
of frozen pizzas, but make sure you put out some sort of vegetable.”

Gabby put her hands on her hips. “Okay,
I can do all that, but only if I get to be Dorothy.”

Mrs. Henderson rolled her eyes, and
Gabby seemed to realize she’d gone too far. Her shoulders slumped as she headed
toward home and frozen pizza.

Dylan, his confidence stuttering under
my dad’s glare, said, “Maybe I should go and help her.”

“That would be good,” my dad said.

Seconds after the Henderson’s van
pulled away, a strange car, maybe even older than Uncle Mitch’s T-Bird, turned
down our drive. Baby blue and white and as long as a hearse, the car looked a
lot like the one I’d seen in the film clips of JFK’s assassination, which meant
it was about the same age as my dad.

“This day just keeps getting better,”
my dad mumbled, watching the car approach. He turned to me. “You better get
down here, Petunia.” Then with about as much enthusiasm as he would say the city is overrun with rats, he said, “Your
grandmother is here.”

I leaned out the window, resting my
forearms on the sill. “Don’t you think you should have told me about her before
now?”

He grunted and turned away.

“No! You don’t get to be mad at me! I’m
mad at you!” I called after him.

He didn’t answer, but banged through
the back door.

I ran down the stairs, wanting to
confront him before the mysterious grandmother arrived.

I stopped short when I saw her standing
in the almost never used living room. She stood on the tapestry rug, small,
trembling, fuzzy-haired, and bright-eyed. Despite the warm autumn air, she wore
a long crimson velvet skirt, a brown wool blazer, and a pink feather boa. She
came to me with her arms extended.

“There you are, beautiful!” She pulled
me in for a warm, lavender-smelling hug. She felt fragile and brittle in my
embrace, and the boa tickled my nose. “You must be very brave, dear,” she whispered
in my ear.

Her words fanned my neck, and a trill
went down my back.

Pulling away, she took hold of both of
my hands. “You look just like your mother did at your age.”

“Sophia has strawberry blonde hair,” my dad said. He stood in the
center of the room, frowning at us, and looking, for once, awkward.

“And Evelynn’s hair is the color of
honey,” my grandmother quipped without looking at him, “both delicious and
edible.”

Uncle Mitch, who must have shown up
some time during the hug, snorted.

My grandmother threw him a nasty look
over her shoulder. “What’s that, Mitchel?”

She said Mitchel, but for some reason,
it sounded like Michelle. I had never noticed how similar sounding the two
names were until just that moment.

Uncle Mitch bit his lip and looked
away.

“Shall we all sit down so we can
discuss my granddaughter’s education?”

Interesting, officially the house
belonged to my dad and uncle, and yet this tiny woman acted like she owned the
place. She had the two grown men, both well-respected and exceptionally
successful, shuffling into their seats. What was there about her? She had to
weigh less than a hundred pounds. She looked about as old and as harmless as Penguin,
the Henderson’s Boston terrier. Sitting on the sofa, she smiled at me and patted
the cushion beside her.

“Now, my
dear, why don’t you tell us where you would like to go to school?”

I looked at
the two nearly identical brothers. My dad wore a pin-stripe suit, a heavily
starched shirt, and burgundy tie. Uncle Mitch had on his khakis and a
button-down cotton shirt. But they both wore matching scowls.

“I want to
go to Norfolk High School,” I said, smiling into my grandmother’s dark eyes.

“The public
school?” she asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

Uncle Mitch
gave a small shake of his head.

“Why not?”
I demanded, jumping to my feet.

Uncle Mitch
met my gaze. “They won’t take you.”

“They won’t
take me?” I echoed. “What do you mean, they won’t take me? They’re a public
school. They have to take everyone.”

“No, they
don’t have to take those who may put their students at risk,” Dad said.

“Put their
students at risk?” I repeated, feeling woozy. I sat back down on the sofa and,
as if to complain, it let out a puff of dust. “They think I’m dangerous?”

“Do you
know anything about this, Beatrix?” Dad asked.

“And if you
can’t go to the public school,” my grandmother pressed, completely ignoring my
dad, “what would be your next choice?”

“Well,” I
shot both my uncle and dad quick glances, “then I guess I would want to be
homeschooled.” But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. I wanted to go to Faith
Despaign, if only to see Dylan again.

“I tried
calling her lots of times,” I said. “She must be somewhere without cell
service.”

“With awful
Fred, I suppose,” Birdie murmured.

“You know
about Fred?”

Birdie
fixed her dark eyes on mine. “She’s my daughter.”

“Yes, but…”

“This is
settled,” Birdie said. “Evelynn must attend Faith Despaign.”

Dylan’s
smile flashed in my mind again. If he was Josh’s age, he’d be two grades ahead,
so we probably wouldn’t share classes, but I could still see him…at least more
than I would if I was homeschooled and stuck in my bedroom alone with a
computer. I thought about all the stuff I’d miss if I was homeschooled—the
prom, the games, the clubs.

Tears
sprung in my eyes, surprising me. I tried to blink them back, but a few fell
down my cheeks and landed on my hands clenched in my lap.

“I will
pick her up tomorrow.” Birdie lifted herself off the sofa, and smoothed down
her ruffled feather boa.

“Why?” Dad
asked.

“So I can
take her to school, of course. Mrs. Craig is quite looking forward to meeting
her.”

“She is?” I
asked.

Birdie
cupped my face in her hands. “Of course, she is. She’s intrigued by your powers.
We all are.”

Powers?

Bree nodded and squeezed my
hand, sending me a shot of sympathy. Standing, she threw one leg over the sill.

I heard more than see Bree
fall. I ran to the window to watch her flailing arms and hands search for a
hand-hold. Branches and twigs snapped beneath her weight.

CHAPTER THREE

“Bree! Are you okay?”

She gaped up at me, her mouth
a perfect O as she tumbled backward. She landed on the grass.

Josh and his friend, Dylan
Fox followed by the Henderson’s three dogs,Joker the German shepherd and Penguin the ancient
black and white Boston terrier, sprinted
across the lawn.

“Gabby! Go get Mom!” Josh
called to his little sister over his shoulder right before he vaulted over the
hedge separating our yards. He landed with a one-footed thud.

Feeling a little like
Rapunzel, I leaned out my window. “Bree?”

She moaned without opening
her eyes. With her arms spread out wide, she lay flat on her back. If not for
her left leg sticking out at an odd angle, she looked like she could be taking
a nap on the lawn.

Her brother and Dylan stared
down at her as if she was a strange fish washed up on shore. Josh looked up and
frowned at me. Dylan met my gaze with a smile.

“Hi,” he mouthed without
noise.

I waved. Heat crawled up my
neck, and I hoped he couldn’t see my blush. We stared at each other until the front
door opened and shut with a bang.

Dad.

He stomped up the stairs and
entered my room, the GQ version of Uncle Mitch, handsome, but in the way that
said he knew and it mattered, as opposed to Uncle Mitch’s good looks without
intention or effort. He joined me at the window, concern for Bree obviously
over-riding, for the moment, our mutual frustration with each other.

Mr. and Mrs. Henderson came running from their
house across the field. Gabby, Bree’s little sister, followed, and tried to
rein in the dogs fussing over Bree.

“This
day just keeps getting better,” my dad mumbled, turning his attention from the
Henderson Family circus to the giant baby blue Cadillac approaching the house.
He turned to me and said with about as much enthusiasm as he would say the city
is overrun with rats, “Your grandmother is here.”

“Don’t
you think you should have told me about her before now?”

He
grunted and turned away.

“No!
You don’t get to be mad at me! I’m mad at you!” I called after him.

He
didn’t respond, but pounded down the stairs to the living room.

I
ran after him, wanting to confront him before the mysterious grandmother
arrived.

I
stopped short when I saw her standing in the almost never used living room. She
stood on the tapestry rug, small, trembling, fuzzy-haired, and bright-eyed.
Despite the warm autumn air, she wore a long crimson velvet skirt, a brown wool
blazer, and a pink feather boa. She came to me with her arms extended.

“There
you are, Beautiful!” She pulled me in for a warm, lavender-smelling hug. She
felt fragile and brittle in my embrace, and the boa tickled my nose. “You must
be very brave, dear,” she whispered in my ear.

Her
words fanned my neck, and a trill went down my back.

Pulling
away, she took hold of both of my hands. “You look just like your mother did at
your age.”

“Sophia
has strawberry blonde hair,” my dad said. He stood in the center of the room,
frowning at us, and looking, for once, awkward.

“And
Evelynn’s hair is the color of honey,” my grandmother quipped without looking
at him, “both delicious and edible.”

Uncle
Mitch, who must have shown up some time during the hug, snorted.

My
grandmother threw him a nasty look over her shoulder. “What’s that, Mitchel?”

She said Mitchel, but for
some reason, it sounded like Michelle. I had never noticed how similar sounding
the two names were until just that moment.

Uncle Mitch bit his lip and
looked away.

“Shall we all sit down so we
can discuss my granddaughter’s education?”

Interesting, officially the
house officially belonged to my dad and uncle, and yet this tiny woman acted
like she owned the place. She had the two grown men, both well-respected and exceptionally
successful, shuffling into their seats. What was there it about her? She had to
weigh less than a hundred pounds. She looked about as old and as harmless as
Penguin, the Henderson’s ancient terrier. Sitting on the sofa, she smiled at me
and patted the cushion beside her.

“Now, my dear, why don’t you
tell us where you would like to go to school?”

I looked at the two nearly
identical brothers. My dad wore a pin-stripe suit, a heavily starched shirt,
and burgundy tie. Uncle Mitch had on his khakis and a button-down cotton shirt.
But they both wore matching scowls.

“I want to go to Norfolk High
School,” I said, smiling into my grandmother’s dark eyes.

“The public school?” she
asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

Uncle Mitch gave a small
shake of his head.

“Why not?” I demanded,
jumping to my feet.

Uncle Mitch met my gaze.
“They won’t take you.”

“They won’t take me?” I
echoed. “What do you mean, they won’t take me? They’re a public school. They have to take everyone.”

“No, they don’t have to take
those who may put their students at risk,” Dad said.

“Put their students at risk?”
I repeated, feeling woozy. I sat back down on the sofa and, as if to complain,
it let out a puff of dust. “They think I’m dangerous?”

“Do you know anything about
this, Beatrix?” Dad asked.

“And if you can’t go to the
public school,” my grandmother pressed, completely ignoring my dad, “what would
be your next choice?”

“But right now, there’s
nothing we can do to help them,” she said, “and everything we can do to salvage
your education.”

On the lawn, I could see Bree
making the best of a bad situation by bravely fluttering her eyelashes at a
blushing Dylan as he tried to help her up despite Mr. Henderson’s obvious
disapproval.In the distance, an ambulance began to wail.

“Evelynn?” my grandmother
pressed.

“Well,” I shot both my uncle
and dad quick glances before sitting back down on the sofa, “then I guess I
would want to be homeschooled.” But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true.

Through the window, Dylan
grinned at me, but his smile faltered when he met my dad’s glare. I wanted to
go to Faith Despaign, if only to see Dylan again.

She must have read the
surprise on my face. “Your mother never talked about Faith Despaign?”

“She never talked about you!”
I blurted, pulling my hand free.

“Oh, naughty Sophia.” Birdie
tsked her tongue. “And what does my daughter say about this turn of events?”

The two brothers exchanged
glances as the ambulance’s wail grew louder. All of the Henderson dogs began to
wail. With a crunch of tires on gravel, the emergency vehicle pulled down our
drive, and three paramedics jumped out.

Both
men bristled.My dad stood, walked to one side of the room,
turned on his heel, and walked back.

“I
tried calling her lots of times,” I said, giving Birdie only half of my
attention. I felt sick as I watched Bree being lifted onto a gurney. “Can I go
with Bree?” I asked Dad.

He
gave a short, brisk shake of his head without breaking his pace. “They wouldn’t
let you in the ambulance,” he added in a softer tone. “It’s a Henderson crisis.
They’re used to those.”

“She’s with that awful Fred, I suppose,”
Birdie murmured.

“You know about Fred?”

Birdie fixed her dark eyes on
mine. “She’s my daughter.”

“Yes, but…”

“This is settled,” Birdie
said. “Evelynn must attend Faith Despaign.”

Dylan’s smile flashed in my
mind again. If he was Josh’s age, he’d be two grades ahead, so we probably
wouldn’t share classes, but I could still see him…at least more than I would if
I was homeschooled and stuck in my bedroom alone with a computer. I thought
about all the stuff I’d miss if I was homeschooled—the prom, the games, the
clubs.

Tears sprung in my eyes,
surprising me. I tried to blink them back, but a few fell down my cheeks and
landed on my hands clenched in my lap.

“I will pick her up tomorrow.”
Birdie lifted herself off the sofa, and smoothed down her ruffled feather boa.

“Why?” Dad asked.

“So I can take her to school,
of course. Mrs. Craig is quite looking forward to meeting her.”

“She is?” I asked.

Birdie cupped my face in her
hands. “Of course, she is. She’s intrigued by your powers. We all are.”

Powers?

She
turned and headed for the door. “I shall be here at noon,” she said over her
shoulder.

From
the window, I watched Josh, Dylan, the dogs, and Gabby walk across the field
that separated the Henderson’s property from ours. I really wished that I could
go with them.Birdie’s car followed the ambulance down the
drive.

When
both vehicles disappeared and our lawn was once again empty of anything other
than trees and fallen leaves, I turned back to my dad and uncle. “Powers?” I
asked.